The Persistence of Pinterest

By Samantha White

For those of you who haven’t joined Pinterest yet, here is a simple breakdown. It is self-described as a “virtual pinboard,” meaning it allows you to share ideas with your own community of followers, much like other social media sites.  It’s the new “bookmarking.” Instead of emailing a link to yourself or bookmarking it onto a toolbar, you pin it onto a categorized board. Instead of tearing a recipe out of a magazine, you visit a chef’s website, find the recipe you like, and pin the URL onto another board. It’s streamlining what we have been doing for years – saving and organizing hard copies of ideas worth remembering. Here are some interesting things to know about the new social media platform that is quickly taking over the blogosphere:

• Only 1 of 10 financial investors and 5 of 19 employees are women, despite the overwhelmingly high percentage of female users (from Pinterest)
• Daily users have increased by 145% since the beginning of 2012 (from Mashable)
• The typical American Pinterest user spends an average of 77 minutes on the site, compared to Twitter’s 36 minute visits (from Mediabistro)

I can personally vouch for the last statistic, as Pinterest is where I spend most of my time online. After a long day at work, some evenings I sit at my computer and pin things for hours. Reaching 1000 pins felt like a big accomplishment. As a creative minded person, it inspires me to think creatively in all aspects of life. When I joined Pinterest, I was feeling like I needed a new creative outlet – something that pushed me to think outside of the box more often.

Samantha's Pinterest Boards

Pinterest has succeeded at what other social media sites have tried for years – creating enough content to keep users busy for a longer period of time. A virtual time-suck that leaves you feeling creatively satisfied. What’s interesting about Pinterest is this: in a time where everything is digital and technology driven, our creativity now also has a digital platform. Once upon a time, we had to go OUT into the world to physically create. Now, all you have to do is logon and request an invite.

Happy pinning!